5 Unbelievable Stories of Customers Going Bat-Sh*t Crazy

Once in a while everyone loses their cool. Sometimes it results in people raising their voices, grunting in frustration or absolutely, unequivocally losing their g*dd*mn sh*t in a glorious (and often incomprehensible) cloud of curse words and thrown objects. Granted that is not the default reaction to not receiving what you think is the appropriate amount of service. But let’s be honest, completely epic meltdowns are so much more entertaining than perturbed customers that ask to speak with management.

First we need to define bat-shit crazy: one type is when a customer goes into Mackey D’s and asks for truffle oil on their Big Mac. The other type is the customer that has an overdramatic reaction to bad or perceived bad service. Lucky for you, we are an equal opportunity mocker so we will be including both variations of door-knob licking craziness in this article. These are unbelievable stories of customers going bat-shit crazy.

Bag it and Tag it

Surveys are the bread and butter of the marketing world. It gives these masters of advertisement an in depth look into customer attitudes towards their brand, products and service, well the sane ones at least. Such was the case of a customer that was asked to complete a survey upon the completion of her credit card payment. Up until the survey, the customer showed no signs of insanity, she was polite, well-spoken and smiled.

But suddenly with the rage of a thousand Vikings that had their horned helmets tied together (Gunther’s going to get it) she asks for a bag with handles. She meant a paper bag with handles, but in her eyes the cashier’s response of “all of our bags have handles” seemed patronizing, and a paper bag with handles was unavailable. After insisting for her original demand, the customer turned her fury on the credit card survey. She took the stylus pen and engraved the surface with a teeth-gritting deep number “1”(participants were asked to rate customer service from 1 to 5). The customer looked up and angrily said like Charles Bronson: “Next time have paper bags.”

Different Type of Crazy

See, the aforementioned customer’s dismay can be more or less justified. I mean a retailer should have a more eco-friendly alternative to landfill saturating plastic bags. This customer, however, is the type of customer that could easy pass as a manic street preacher or as Buffalo Bill (not the cowboy one, the “it puts lotion on its skin” one). So a customer was looking for a very specific type of stationary but didn’t really want to talk to anyone face to face. So this completely sane individual decides to call the stationary store…while in the stationary store.

Our poor hapless customer service agent answers the phone, here’s the other side (the customer’s side of the conversation) taking place within the store. Perplexed the CS agent finds the customer and attempts to speak to him, but the customer points at the phone and continues to use it to speak to the person…directly in front of him. See, most people would have seen this as a red-flag/invitation to run away with your arms flailing over your head. But our heroic and utterly confused clerk helped the customer find what he needed, speaking to each other through the phone the whole time.

The Boundaries Type of Customer

There are certain social protocols that mandate the interaction between complete strangers. The most obvious include: be polite, keep your hands to yourself and do not a eat strangers’ food, no matter how hungry, or accessible said food is. Well, some social nuances are lost on certain people, the customer at hand being one. The customer came into the eatery (fancy way of saying fast food joint) while the manager was having lunch and inquired about a lost item. The manager went to the back room to retrieve said lost property and found the customer had reached over the counter, over the computer and taken the manager’s chips and was merrily munching away. The manager confronted the chips (that’s American chips not the Irish one’s you Guinness Drinker) thief who responded: “Well I was just going to have a few!” with indignation. Ok, granted this isn’t completely crazy but it’s still pretty brazen, right?

Over Caffeinated Catastrophe

Most normal, well-adjusted individuals appreciate a little morning or mid-day pick me up courtesy of Colombian Gold. No, I’m not talking about cocaine, I can see how your drug addled mind came to that conclusion, I’m talking about coffee. At a widely popular coffee store chain that perpetually plays Nora Jones and has a Mermaid as its emblem but will remain unnamed, a man ordered 21 espressos.

Assuming he was the nice guy Greg from the office on a coffee run, the barrage of baristas quickly filled his order and called (and I assume mispronounced) his name. The customer drank all 21 espressos on the spot and then rapidly went outside and projectile vomited, all the 21 espressos plus (again I assume) his lunch. He then left without even looking back…put honestly that would have made him certifiable.

The Genuine Type

So generally when confronted with a mental breakdown you give that person their distance and if available, ask for help. The protagonist of our story was sitting at their post in a pita shop during a horrible snow storm, doing their college homework. Immediately after coming to the pleasant realization that he/she was being paid to study, a slightly rough-for-ware customer walked in and ordered a chicken pita. Oh, the food establishment the college student was working at was a pita sandwich shop. As our cute, fresh faced college student asked what the customer would like on his pita, he responded: “Peppers” and then proceeded to ask for an excessive amount of pepper in addition to the massive heap already on his sandwich.

More than happy, the smiling customer paid, took his sandwich, sat down, took two bites and literally, proverbially and by definition lost his f*cking mind. He started screaming incomprehensively, saying how much he hates f*cking peppers, slammed down the pita on the table, resulting in it exploding all over the shop and then took off his parka and rubbed the demolished pita and peppers on his bare chest.

Yes the man wasn’t wearing a shirt in the midst of a Canadian blizzard. The customer then turned his rage towards a towering drink refrigerator filled with glass bottles, toppling it (almost on himself) and smashing the contents of the drink cooler completely. He kicked and threw around a few chairs and then fell to the floor in the fetal position and cried. Just when our hapless college student thought he was getting paid to study…